How Violet Evergarden Reclaimed Her Humanity Through Love
Japanese Anime is no stranger to exploring deep and morbid themes usually left untouched by Western Animation. War-focused stories starring children and teenagers are especially prevalent, and for decades anime has especially been fascinated with child soldiers, analyzing their psyche and placing them at the center of moral conflicts. Neon Genesis Evangelion and Attack on Titan are perhaps the most well-known examples, but Violet Evergarden offers a new, introspective look at the wartime theme.
What happens to the child soldier when the war ends? What happens when the brief epilogue is the entire series? Those hints at lifelong trauma, buried emotions, and lost humanity aren’t just insinuated. Instead, Violet Evergarden depicts this aftermath in its entirety, taking an unfiltered look at the complex and hardened emotions of child soldiers. When the world sees you as nothing more than a weapon, how do you reassert your humanity, your agency, and your own self-worth?
Violet Evergarden stars Violet (Erika Harlacher) as the eponymous character after she leaves the war front, missing both her hands and her beloved Major. Only fourteen years old, Violet has endured tragedies most people can hardly even imagine, and due to her abnormal upbringing, she isn’t considered entirely human by those around her. Having been forced to fight in the Great War since childhood, Violet was stripped of her humanity and essentially forced to become a living weapon.
Only Major Gilbert (Tony Azzolino) treats her with any semblance of kindness, viewing Violet as an actual person rather than a tool of the military. The audience might be forgiven for initially thinking that she is an artificial being, considering her lack of response to her newly-replaced metal hands and snide comments from her fellow soldiers concerning her “lack of a human heart”. But as the series progresses, the audience doesn’t doubt for a single moment that she is human. In fact, she is arguably the most human character in the entire series.
In her post-war world, Violet becomes an Auto Memory Doll who writes letters for others as a way of expressing their unarticulated emotions. This in itself initially seems like an oxymoron, as Violet is hardly able to express her own emotions let alone those of others. But throughout the series, she befriends her fellow Dolls and takes on numerous clients each of whom is dealing with their own version of grief, loneliness, and desire for companionship. Most importantly, each of her clients and friends is dealing with the consequences of their love for others, whether platonic, familial, or romantic.
With each letter, Violet begins to understand other people’s emotions and desires for the first time, and in turn, discovers her own humanity. Writing letters for others allows her to progress from the emotionally stunted child soldier she once was, as begins to assert herself and her desires, rather than just mindlessly following orders. Rather than just assuming the name ‘Violet Evergarden’, given to her by Gilbert and the Evergarden family, she becomes Violet Evergarden, a Doll capable of writing heart-stirring pieces.
Violet’s first attempts as a Doll go poorly, her letters brief and too literal as she is unable to understand what her clients are seeking to express. However, after meeting Luculia Marlborough (Kira Buckland) at the Auto Memory Doll Training School, Violet learns that Dolls don’t just transcribe the person’s literal words but illustrate the depths of their emotions by reading between the lines. Violet sees a kindred soul in Luculia as someone who has likewise suffered due to the war, feeling distant from her grieving brother after the loss of their parents.
Luculia’s confession to Violet about her grief and desire to comfort her brother stirs previously unknown emotions in her, allowing Violet to understand what it means to truly love another for the first time. Indeed, the desire to understand what love means was what drove Violet to become a Doll in the first place. Luculia’s words allow her to unlock the meaning of love, even if she doesn’t quite understand it yet, and to convey those complex emotions on paper.
Violet’s first major client is the immature and bratty but evidently lonely, Princess Charlotte (Stephanie Sheh). Charlotte’s status as a Princess and isolated upbringing, though severely different from Violet’s, meant that she too was never viewed as her own person. As Charlotte was only ever treated as a potential consort and as a chess piece to be manipulated by the military and government officials, she too lacks personal agency.
As she confides in Violet about her loneliness, she reveals that she has been infatuated with Prince Damian as he was the first person who ever treated her as a normal being. Violet then begins a passionate correspondence with Damian, as she transcribes Charlotte’s true feelings to him, learning what romantic love is for the first time. But Violet isn't the only one who learns from the time together, as Charlotte’s growing relationship with her Doll allows her to mature as a person and reassert her own agency.
Violet finds herself growing attached to several of her clients, though not in an unhealthy manner, and in turn, her clients rediscover their own buried love and grief for others. She is later hired by the injured Oscar Webster (Joe Ochman), a famous playwright, to write down his next play. This is his first play meant for children, and for the first time, the audience truly understands just how young Violet really is. She becomes extremely attached to the main character in his play and urges the grief-stricken and lonely Oscar to continue writing.
Throughout her time with him, Violet learns that Oscar’s decrepit state stems from the loss of his wife and then later his young daughter, on whom he based his main character. As Oscar begins to see his daughter in Violet, and Violet begins to visualize and understand Olive, the two grow closer and begin to unravel their emotions. Violet doesn’t just witness Oscar’s love for his family, she unearths it.
As the series comes to a conclusion, the lessons Violet has learned from her friends and clients begin to irrevocably change her. The audience sees just how much she’s grown from the mute, mistreated child soldier to a young woman with her own goals and burgeoning love for those around her. When she returns to the front once more, she isn’t there as a weapon but as a protective force who seeks to end the war and comfort those who are dying. Her last moments with her client, Aidan Field (Johnny Yong Bosch), illustrate just how far the subdued, once emotionless Violet has come.
No longer, does she not understand what love is, rather she is the personification of it. Her love for strangers and close companions alike define Violet rather than the actions she was forced to undertake in the war. The bonds she grows from writing letters for her friends allow Violet to reclaim her lost humanity, and in time to write a letter that expresses her own love for Major Gilbert. Violet Evergarden demonstrates that the bonds we share with others, whether fresh and exciting or tinged with grief, are what makes us human, and what allows Violet to find hope and meaning in her own, strange world.
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